What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

Gary Sax wrote: So have you ever been tempted to sell off those prize ships? I feel like I would be...

To be honest, not really. I just like the game too much and the completionist in me wouldn't allow it as long as I was still playing the game.

Since we were discussing Letters from White Chapel the other day, I'll post this. Seems they determined the real culprit:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2746321...?ito=social-facebook

The second wave of Rivet Wars stuff came in a few days back so the wife and I took some of the new goodies out for a spin. In the end, I love this game. It is light, random, moves quick and isn't without flaws but to look at it critically would be like looking at Thunder Road or Hero Quest critically - It can be done but shouldn't.

The new stuff, which I only have half of, adds that extra character and flavor into the game and really opens it up. I know the game has its detractors though and it is easy to see why - A few dice rolls in one's favor and a few timely card pulls can easily win or lose a game, just like how a '6' from a Buggy can take down a Hulk and swing a game in Thunder Road.

The scenario was the Allied (the Not-British) staring the game holding a few Strategic Objectives at the center of the board. The Blight (the Not-Germans) received more reinforcements each turn and needed to overrun those forward positions because each turn a SO is held it grants the person VPs and in this scenario 8 are needed to win.

My first turn brought out a few more infantry to reinforce my front line as well as a 65 pounder to provide artillery cover. My wife advanced with a few infantry a mono-wheel cav unit and a anti-troop artillery unit. At the start of my second turn I had 4 VP but by the end of her second turn one of my forward positions fell and started to get her VPs.

By this time I brought in Atomic Robo who is a robot from another dimension brought into this world by the evil Dr Vorne who I used to reinforce my infantry holding onto my position. My left flank though began to take casualties from the Plague Troopers and one of my Riflemen who fell was overcome by the virus that consumes them and became a Plague Trooper himself. The next turn though, I was able to bring out the M1 Ostrich and the following turn bring in The Veteran (Not-Rambo) Plug to pilot the Ostrich. That turn the massive firepower was able to punch back the Blight's push and retake the SO's for the win securing Hill 356 for The Allies.

Just a fun and enjoyable game. It isn't for everyone but is one firmly on my Forever Shelf.

DERP, WRONG THREAD

Yesterday's game day started out with Santa Fe Rails, which is an Alan Moon train game that does more with the idea than TtR but is still pretty easy to approach. I like it, but it's possible to draw nothing but suck-ass city cards that are never going to be worth much. I ended up losing by like 30-40 points thanks to this, though I concede that maybe more skillful play would have done me better.

Then played Yedo, which was new to me. I know it's trite to compare it to Lords of Waterdeep, but there isn't much of a way around that. Yedo adds a lot more machinery to the game, but for me the appeal of LoW is that it's super-streamlined. Yedo's also a lot more nasty, both in what you can do to other players and in what the game can do to you. When all is said and done I'll stick with Waterdeep, but there's nothing wrong with Yedo.

Had a family game night this weekend. Was able to break out Fantasy Business which is an old Descartes Blue Box game from Christophe Boelinger. Fans of games like Intrigue should take notice of this evil, negotiating/price fixing game.

Each round of the game people bid on different items that they want to sell in their fantasy shop. There are only like 6 or 7 different items (Swords, potions, healing herbs etc...) and eventually more than one player will be offering the same goods. So after the auction the people with the same goods get together and attempt to fix the price of the items. Problem is, you can straight up lie to their face. The person that sells it cheapest gets a bonus...while the person that sells it for the highest gets nothing (presumably because customers went to the competition who were selling the same thing for dirt cheap). When you're writing down that price on your little score pad, it's very nerve wracking. Is the person gonna completely fuck you over? It's very fun though.

To make things worse, players can bid on special cards that give one time abilities that you be a real dick.

I think people that are fans of pure negotiating games will find this one to be worth tracking down. It's mean as all hell and quite a bit of fun.

Went on a binge this weekend with the new games.

Played MY FIRST CARCASSONNE with Edden and Meital--that's a three and a six year old there. Good times all around. It's a great game for kids--the tile matching is like RIVERS, ROADS, & BOATS, but every tile matches. The game is choosing where to put the tile to get your dudes on the board instead of just recognizing you can put a tile down somewhere.

Good games for three year olds: GULO GULO, MY FIRST CARCASSONNE, SNAIL'S PACE RACE, VILLA PALETTI

Played ELDRITCH HORROR with Shai (9). It's "way way way way way way easier to play" than ARKHAM, per him. We went up against Shub-Niggurath and got the crap beaten out of us. Rumor for the Spinner of Webs was our second Mythos phase and we never beat it. Shai rolled seven dice of Will and had one success, and I'd rolled four-at-a-time thrice with one success each, so we never even got to attack it. Meanwhile that Goat had A Thousand Young and we died. Sorry Earth! Tough spider! The best improvement this game has on ARKHAM is the constructed Mythos deck. In ARKHAM, there were rules for not getting obliterated by a bad draw on the Mythos deck (e.g., "ignore Rumors on the first turn"), but this is baked into ELDRITCH by design. It's really well done. And using clues to generate a random location is also nifty.

Made some farms with Sivan (10) in AGRICOLA: ALL CREATURES BIG & SMALL. Gorgeous components and the game is fun enough. Nice little bite-size game, and worthy addition to a 2p collection.

Shai, Sivan, and I also played ZOOLORETTO. We are big fans of CALIFORNIA and there are enough similarities there to make this easy to learn for us. My flamingo game is unstoppable.

I spent some time going over the rules for ROBINSON CRUSOE, and they are a clusterfuck. I just went to a let's play video on Youtube (even there, the guy has patched in a bunch of comments of how he screwed up rules as he played). Seen there, it looks doable, but these rules read like ASL backwards.

5p game of A Study in Emerald. This was by far the longest of the four games I've played, at 2.5 hours. We struggled for quite a while to get things to a point where we could try to seize the win, but one of our players was particularly murky about his allegiance so that made it harder. I was finally able to put him in the middle (so it didn't matter what side he was on) and jump ahead for the victory, assassinating one of my loyalist restorationist opponents to end the game.

5p game of Dead of Winter. My friend made the mistake of not realizing there were two sides to the team objective cards, so we ended up playing the expert version of that and got creamed in the second round. Some interesting things in the game, and I like the dice allocation system, but I was also a little underwhelmed, especially by the "crossroad" card thing, which kept being hailed as some brilliant innovation. Uh sure, it's a decent idea to keep people involved, but it's just one person paying attention and reading the result of an event/encounter card. Nothing really earth-shattering about that. There were some fun results, though, where seemingly unlikely things ended up happening to trigger the card effect. For example, on my turn the crossroad card said that if I had the sheriff as a character it would trigger the event. I didn't have the sheriff to begin with, but while searching drew a followers card and happened to draw the sheriff from among a large deck of characters. I do want to play again on the normal level where we'll have more of a chance. I can't really consider this play a good experience to gauge the game on.

Played Smash Up with my daughter, first time in a while. Still fun, and I enjoyed my Time Traveling Shapeshifters deck, which handily beat the Zombie Dinosaurs (her favorite deck, which she usually wins with).

How did assassinating a Loyalist trigger the end of the game in Emerald?

jeb wrote: I spent some time going over the rules for ROBINSON CRUSOE, and they are a clusterfuck. I just went to a let's play video on Youtube (even there, the guy has patched in a bunch of comments of how he screwed up rules as he played). Seen there, it looks doable, but these rules read like ASL backwards.

Someone made some rules explanation thing in the form of a comic book, and I think it's on Z-Man Games' site. Go there first to understand how to play and explain the game, and then you can read the rules to pick up the missing details.